Mobile terminals operating on a Long Term Evolution (LTE) air interface as specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) may utilize system information messages including System Information Blocks (SIB) and Master Information Blocks (MIB) to communicate with base stations. Different LTE system information messages may each contain a variety of important information essential to wireless communication on over an LTE air interface, such as channel bandwidth, network identities, cell identities and other information, paging configurations, power control information, cell search/measurement parameters, etc.
Analogous system information messages may be utilized for other Radio Access Technologies (RAT), such as the counterpart SIB and MIB in Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and System Information (SI) messages in Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM).
A mobile terminal may require different system information messages (e.g. SIB, MIB, and SI) depending on the current state of the mobile terminal. For example, certain events such as cell selection, cell reselection, handover, measurement reporting, etc., may result in a need for a mobile terminal to obtain certain system information by receiving and decoding a given system information message over the wireless air interface.